The first Sunday in November was unseasonably warm
this year. Actually, let me retract that. This is the
first yearand, thus, the first NovemberI'm
living in southeastern Pennsylvania. For all I know,
every Sunday in November is unseasonably warm around
here. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me. I've seen
weirder things in these partslike drivers
signaling right to go left. So let's just say it was
t-shirt weather the first Sunday in November and leave
it at that.

Anyway, my wife and I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond
that afternoon. And before you break into
Will-Ferrell-as-Frank-in-"Old School" jokes, let me
just tell you, no, we didn't go to Home Depot to pick
out wallpaper and flooring. We did go to Target and
Pet Smart, though. And both of them were wonderful.
But anyway, as my wife and I walked into Bed, Bath,
and Beyond, we were greeted by perhaps the most
annoying employee at any store I've ever been to. You
could tell right off the bat this guy was "holiday
help"the kind of worker they lay off a day after
New Year's. His name was Santa. He was 5-feet-tall,
animatronic, and on sale for $70. And he quickly
informed us, "It's the most... wonderful time... of the
year," in tune. Then he shook his booty with all the
grace of Lincoln in Disney's Hall of Presidents.

Did I mention this Santa was animatronic?

So I looked outside just thenat the bright,
shining sun, at the people in t-shirts and cars with
open sunroofs. What time of year was he talking about
anyway? Spring, maybe? Summer? I wasn't sure. So I
looked back at Santa, then I looked at my wife, and I
told her, point blank, "If the next thing he says is
it's starting to look like Christmas, I swearthis guy
is a liar." I meant it. I thought I was fighting the
good fight here. If I had sleeves, I would've rolled
'em up.

"‘This guy' is not a guy," my wife said. "He's a
decoration."

I looked him over again. Oh, yeah. Animatronic.

Case closed.

Well, in retrospect, I think I was wrong anyway. If
this Santa had sung, "It's Beginning to Look a Lot
Like Christmas," he wouldn't've been a liarin
fact, he would've been right. You see, I've grown
accustomed to thinking the Christmas season begins the
day you wake up and see all your neighbors outside
with shovels, trying to find their cars beneath the
first snow. But now I realize that's a very
northeastern-elitist view. I tend to forget they
celebrate Christmas in places like Florida, where it's
sunny all year, and California, where they don't
believe in snow. And who knows? I live in Pennsylvania
now. If December's anything like November, all bets
are offChristmas falls on Sunday this year. So
from now on, I'm not going to look for secular symbolslike seasons and weatherto indicate the start
of Christmas. No. From now on, I will look for the
stuff that really matters: Merchandise. That's the
lesson this Santa guy taught me. Because the way he
greeted shoppersthe walls around him decked in
holly, a Hanukkah display behind where he stoodit
didn't just look "a lot" like Christmas that day. It
looked exactly like Christmas. Only a fool would deny
it.

Hell, even Pet Smart was in the Christmas spirit. They
were advertising photo shoots with Santa (a different
Santa... the real one), for your dog.

Still, I'm not sure I should blame myself for being
confused. Christmas itself is December 25th this year.
Christmas itself is December 25th every year (certain
sects notwithstanding). This much we know. But there
isn't, however, an "official" start of the Christmas
seasonthat's the problem. It's up to
interpretation. And companies like Bed, Bath, and
Beyond are our interpreters. That's why this
fixed-date holiday seems to come earlier and earlier
every year. I mean, it was only a week after Halloween
when I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond. My floor is
still covered in broken dreams and Kit-Kat wrappers.
My teeth are more rotted than the pumpkins outside my
house. How was I supposed to know it's the most
wonderful time of the year?

We've basically gotten to the point now where the
Twelve Days of Christmas last for two whole months.
According to my calculations, that's five Earth Days
for every one Day of Christmas. As soon as we're done
trick-or-treating, bam!, it's time for yuletide. We
don't even bother with Thanksgiving anymore. At some
point or another, we decided to skip it. And why not?
Halloween is a two-month "holiday" all its own. Walk
into an Eckerd or CVS pharmacy in August, you'll
already see witches and bags of fun size Hershey bars.
Thanksgiving has parades, football games, and
tryptophanplenty enough to sustain Black Friday
shopping. You want to make the most of Halloween's
momentum? Put it directly towards Christmas.

That's why September 11th isn't a national holiday
yet. It would eat into Halloween profits and ruin the
entire plan. After all, folks still remember September
11th. Wait till the new Pearl Harbor can become the
new Pearl Harbor Day (i.e., wait till a sitting
president can be forgiven for forgetting the date it
fell on)then mark your calendar.

Honestly, I'm not even sure why we bother with
holidays other than Christmas anymore. In fact, I'm
not even sure why we bother with the rest of the
calendar year. At this point, we might as well
eliminate the middle man and start the new Christmas
season the day the old Christmas season ends. You
know, December 26th. Start your engines. Only 365
shopping days to go.

You have to admit, this would have its benefits.

First of all, you wouldn't have to feel like an idiot
anymore when you open up your fridge after Christmas
and see all that untapped eggnog. Because you know you
always do this. You know you always buy too much
eggnog (which usually means you buy eggnogperiod).
It's not your fault. You tend to forgetwhat with
all that time between Christmasesthat December
26th is eggnog's permanent expiration date. Before
Christmas, it seems like such a swell purchase. After
Christmas, it tastes like gift wrap. But you wouldn't
have to worry about this if Christmas was perpetually
on its way. Eggnog would always be in season. Hooray!

Secondly, you'd be able to leave up your Christmas
lights all year long. Not that you ever take them down
anyway. But you get the drift.

Finally, and perhaps less frivolously, an all-year,
every-year, forever-and-ever-amen sort of Christmas
would allow us to act civil around each other... without
feeling corny about it. You know, goodwill towards
men. Peace on Earth. "Home Alone 2." Stuff like that.
And when you look at it in that light, this
Mega-Christmas thing isn't so bad. It suddenly seems
worth putting up with.

A lot of folks would argue the reason the Christmas
season keeps getting longer is because so many
manufacturers, businesses, networks, etc., stand to
make a killing off it. I do believe that's true (see:
Bed, Bath, and Beyond), but it's incomplete, and it
fails to account for why we buy into the extended
Christmas they're selling. The easy answer to that
question is, "Because we're stupid." I won't argue
with it. We do "celebrate" Halloween for two months.
But I'd like to believe it goes deeper than that. I'd
like to believe the reason we buy into this extended
Christmas season is because we like the way it makes
us feeland more so, because we like the people we
become around Christmas.

Think about it. Even a perfectly realized socialist
societymaintained both by gunpoint and motherly
guiltcouldn't match the spirit of giving that
consumes us at Christmas. We give gifts to friends and
relatives. We give canned goods to food drives. We
even give two you-know-whats about the way other human
beings feel. I won't claim to know what causes this.
Maybe it's force of habit. Maybe it's conformity. Who
knows? It could even be religious duty. (God gave you
His Son for Christmas. The least you can do is give
somebody something.) The point is, whatever compels
you, you give because you want to givenot because
you're forced to. And the fact that you also expect to
receive doesn't detract from it. Every exchange is
willful. You can opt-out of holiday grab-bags.

In other words, America at Christmas is what America
should look likeNorman Rockwell paintings, free
markets, and all. No wonder we like it.

So, yes, there are times when Christmas resembles a
One Day Sale at Macy's. I'll even confess I'm part of
the problem: I've gone to Best Buy at 6:30 a.m. the
day after Thanksgiving for three Thanksgivings in a
row. And not for the bargains, either. For fun. (Not
that I minded the bargains.) I do believe the "true
meaning of Christmas" we hear about on TV differs from
the true "true meaning." But I don't believe crass
commercialization is nearly the point of the holiday
that cynics make it out to be. If anything, it's
probably the opposite. And if that's the case, it's
not all bad.

Of course, on my way out of Bed, Bath, and Beyond that
day, Santa was singing a different tune—this time,
a song about figgy pudding. "We won't leave until we
get some," he insisted. "Please bring it right here."
I suppose that shoots my whole theory to bits. But,
hey, he's animatronic. He knows not what he sings.

Jonathan David Morris writes a weekly column on
politics and personal freedoms for "The Aquarian" and
other publications. His website is www.readjdm.com,
and he can be reached at jdm@readjdm.com.

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